Peter Weller

In Naked Lunch (1991), Peter Weller's Bill Lee makes the creatures around him seem almost routine. He plays the exterminator with a deadpan delivery that leaves us to register how strange things have become. His restraint is a good reason to watch a film whose wandering story sometimes becomes a chore. We found his calm unsettling, because it suggests that Lee has become accustomed to his own distress. Weller allows the humour to survive without making the creatures seem harmless.

The breakthrough leading parts came with The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) and RoboCop (1987). In the latter, directed by Paul Verhoeven, extensive prosthetics and suit work restrict what Weller can show, but the cyborg officer remains someone we can care about. The physical commitment works because it does not cost him the character's vulnerability. Naked Lunch then gives him a different challenge: keeping Bill Lee believable when almost everything around him invites an actor to signal how bizarre it all is.

David Cronenberg gets the benefit of an actor who does not insist on explaining the character's feelings. The troublesome typewriter can be funny and unpleasant without Weller turning every encounter into a display of suffering. He is more persuasive than the film's suggestion that an artist's destructive behaviour acquires importance simply because it feeds the work. The drawback is that his reserve sometimes makes Lee difficult to care about. When the story wanders, that distance leaves us with little reason to worry about where he is going.

Later came recurring television roles and a substantial move into directing television episodes, beginning in the mid-1990s. His supporting film appearances include Admiral Alexander Marcus in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). For an introduction, though, we would go back to the leading roles. Start with Naked Lunch for the dry humour, provided a wandering story is something the evening can accommodate.